Is coffee really getting that popular? First I heard about coffee beer from Nestle and now it’s Coca-Cola with real coffee included in its cold drink.

Also see: Coffee art gallery

Image teaser for the coffee art gallery

The days of Sega and Sonic are sorely missed
and appear irreplaceable in its Japanese place of birth

BOX 360 is a gaming console from Microsoft, which has hit the streets just weeks ahead of Christmas. The Xbox 360 brought with it great anticipation among games enthusiasts, so sales were expected to be exceptionally high. Nonetheless, it has been revealed that Japan is reluctant to embrace the Xbox 360:

“It’s not going to be a big hit in Japan,” said 26-year-old Kentaro Okamoto, one of the first Xbox 360 buyers. “I buy every new game console… but normally Japanese customers only buy a machine when it’s made by Sony or Nintendo.”

In a similar article which comes from the BBC:

Microsoft has launched its Xbox 360 games console in Japan to what seems like a more subdued response than it received in Europe and North America.

[...]

Sales of the first Microsoft Xbox in Japan have always lagged behind Sony PlayStation 2, which was launched two years before it.

It sound as though this model will make a complete 360, having solved none of its previous shortcomings. As a publicity stunt perhaps, it is understocked on the shelves though.

On top of it all, we recently heard of some serious bugs and great trouble surrounding the Xbox 360, which perhaps was unready for prime time. Consequently, lawsuits begin to loom over, which put the product’s reputation in jeopardy.

Open Source enthusiasts might be happy to hear that a “Linux on Xbox 360″ project has already been initiated. Microsoft are actually losing money for every unit that they sell. Profit is expected to be made using games sales. Having said that, units that are sold in vain give game programmers the illusions that the Xbox is popular, which urges more involvement. It is a similar case to Windows workstations that are wiped clean to give way to Linux, yet are still counted as Windows sales.

Related item: Is Nintendo Dying?

A surprise birthday gift from last year

Y birthday is coming up next Saturday. There will be no fuss, but a Christmas party instead that night. I can recall last year’s birthday quite vividly, but I can’t say I enjoyed it. The photos reflect poorly on that very reality.

I never liked getting older, especially because I was among the oldest kids in my class (a December born). I tolerated rather than celebrated. I hope and expect that this year’s birthday will be yet another ordinary day, at least in my mind. Perhaps I can fool myself… thinking that I never truly mature by letting it pass by quietly. We digress…

“Joy O’ Joy. You got mail. 10,000 of it…”

S if hijacked Windows boxes were not enough to attribute spam to Windows, have a look at the following story. As it comes from The Register, it is not reluctant to point out that mail floods were initiated by a Microsoft Small Business Server:

The problem was attributed to an improper server configuration, causing five servers to send out more than half a million emails to Dublin solicitors. The deluge of mail originated with a publishing company’s email marketing message, which was sent to solicitors. When some solicitors attempted to reply to the mail, a fault in the solicitors’ configuration of Microsoft Small Business Server sent the original email to their entire email database tens of thousands of times.

Putting the factors above together, Microsoft can no longer deny the fact that spam sometimes originates in their improperly-built operating system. The Windows advocates would argue that the server was configured badly, but should it not be intuitive and protect the users from themselves? Fortunately, there is no doubt in my mind that Dublin lawyers all use Windows, which makes it a dog-eat-dog situation.

Let us hope that the sysadmins have learned their lesson and realised that mail should not be administered by ‘Toy O/S‘. Other companies have learned that mail is better handled by Linux.

[HP’s] Schulz said that HP’s entire email infrastructure… is run on Linux and delivers in the region of three terrabytes [sic] of mail annually.

As information is offered for sale, negotiation
by telephone can seal such transactions

ROM ZDNet comes as item that speaks of yet another odd item ‘on sale’. The article states: “An online auction of a “brand new vulnerability” in Microsoft Excel had reached about $60 when eBay pulled the item late Thursday. A seller using the name “fearwall” started the auction Wednesday evening at 1 cent. It was up to $56 on Thursday afternoon with 21 bids placed, and eBay quashed the auction soon after that.”

Other strange items which I can recall eBay boasting: chewing gums that have been sput out by celebrities, fake love letters, and potato chips.

Opting for ‘old school’ TV, even on a modern set

HILE many of us are afraid of change, some of us refuse to accept change. At some of the worst scenarios, without any awareness, we can miss out on tremendous benefits. Examples from the hardware domain:

• Half of all HDTV owners never use the high definition capabilities of their set.
• Many people still use a single-head display even though they have dual-head graphics card and some old monitor(s) lying around in the house. It is poor use of the available hardware, which few people seem to mind.

As for more examples pertaining to software:

• People browse with Firefox/Opera/Mozilla/Netscape and make no use of tabs.
• Use of heavy and sluggish, Web-based E-mail services, notably MSN/Hotmail. Some vendors/hosts make the exception nonetheless.

ntel are starting to feel the greatest of heats from their competition, most notably AMD. That heat cannot be circumvented by more fans or underclocking either. As explained in a ZDNet blog:

The news keeps getting worse for Intel when it comes to arch nemesis AMD.

[...]

But if that news isn’t bad enough for Intel (and good for AMD), now comes this: AMD’s 7-round clean sweep technical knockout in ZDNet’s comparative review that benchmarked the two companies’ dual-core offerings against each other.

Another comprehensive review provides even more AMD versus Intel CPU benchmarks. Yesterday I heard about profit warnings in Intel, which led to the dive of their stock.

Intel on Thursday slightly narrowed its outlook for fourth-quarter sales, a sign that seems to be making some investors queasy.

As if that was not enough, Intel call the $100 laptop, which runs Open Source software and is intended to serve developing nations, an “undesired gadget”. This sounds like resistance and mockery of a good cause. Need it be mentioned that those laptops use AMD chips? Intel’s chips cost around $40 to manufacture, yet they can never be sold for a price that makes them viable for such low-end, inexpensive laptops.

Previous critiques of Intel:

• Farewell Intel, Welcome AMD
• Intel Sidles Closer to Microsoft